I’ve found the “missing nun”!
There are many psalms which are considered to be acrostics of the Hebrew language, meaning, “a poem or other writing in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out another message. A form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aide memory retrieval.” as defined by Wikipedia.
Anyway, the 145th Psalm is an acrostic as well… but in the Masoretic Text- the ancient text on which the King James and virtually all other modern translations are based- is missing one of the Hebrew letters of the acrostic- the nun.
However, the Masoretic Text is alone in losing the nun. The Septuagint, the the Peshitta Tanak, a Hebrew manuscript from the middle ages, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and (it pains me to say it) even the Vulgate are known to contain this verse.
Open your Bibles please, to Psalm 145:13, which in the King James should read something like this:
“Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”
And there it stops. In fact, the verse should continue on to say, as it is recorded in the other manuscripts:
“Yahweh is faithful to all His promises, and loving toward all He has made.”
This is further evidence that the King James, though a beautiful translation, is just that- merely a translation. I do not believe the Holy Spirit would not have made such an obvious error as to leave out the nun.
That’s it, ladies and gentlemen. The missing nun has been found. Call off the search parties.
Tags: acrostic, Hebrew, Masoretic, nun, Peshitta Tanak, Psalm, Psalm 145, Septuagint
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